Taft High rearranging offices, adding security doors

Business office moving to front of school attendance, front office moving, second set of doors going in main entrance

Doug KeelerMidway Driller

Taft Union High School will be increasing campus security and rearranging its offices this summer.

The first big change visitors will notice is an extra set of security doors are going in the main entrance to the school.

When completed, the security doors will be inside the doors to the administration building and campus visitors will have to wait for a staff member to pass through the second set of doors, Supt. Blanca Cavazos said.

The design will be very similar to the entrance to Roosevelt School, she said.The addition of the security doors is the second major campus security upgrade since the on-campus shooting that critically injured Bowe Cleveland in January 2013.

Cleveland was critically injured by a close-range shotgun blast but is recovering.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, in which another former student, Bryan Oliver, faces attempted murder charges, a new gate was installed at the driveway onto the campus between the science and music buildings at Warren and Wildcat Way, and other gates to the campus were ordered closed during school hours.Those gates are open but manned by campus security officers before and after school.

Taft High's first increased security in response to school shooting came shortly after the 1999 Columbine High shooting in Colorado where two students killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.

In response, TUHS ordered that the doors facing San Emidio Street on the school cafeteria be kept closed and locked when school was in session.Students and staff enter and leave from doors located on campus.

The new security doors are only a part of the summer construction.

The biggest project is a shuffling of three of the busiest offices – the main office-principal's office, attendance office and business office.

Work started last week to move the principal's office from its old location just off the main entrance to the spot the attendance office occupied. The superintendent's office move there, too.

The business office will be moved from the IRC complex on the quad to the old principal's office, and the attendance office will take the business offices former location. The special services offices will move there, too.

TUHS Business manager Chuck Hagstrom said the business office is moving to the font so the public can have better access.